How high's the water mama?
Two feet high and risin'
How high's the water papa?
She said it's two feet high and risin'.
--Johnny Cash
What a spring--as in the skies have sprung a leak. And the rain's not done yet. Does anybody else walk into their backyards and sink ankle-deep? And forget mowing. If the weather holds, maybe the gardeners, hedge-trimmers and row-crop farmers can get back out there sometime next week. Keep your fingers crossed.
But we're not complaining. (Much.) Who can forget just a few summers back when the state was going through a drought, and the maps in the paper showed most of the state in an awful red? Fire red. The rains this year do beat the alternative.
Hmmm. It all got us to thinking about the aquifers again. Last year the talk was about how the underground pools were drying up, and how large farms were taking more out of the ground than Mother Nature could put back, and how could it be changed? Some people refer to the problem as the Tragedy of the Commons. That is, if there's a common resource used by a lot of people, and everybody just wants to take a little more of it for himself, eventually the commons will disappear--and everybody loses. The classic example is of shepherds grazing their animals in the same meadow, but the lesson applies to water, too.
In a state like Arkansas, where 80 percent of the water is used for farming, the tragedy of these commons is only expected to get worse in the years to come. But all this rain. Surely it's helping, right?
For the answer to that question, go to the experts. And what better expert than the interim deputy director of the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission, aka Edward Swaim? Here's his answer:
Rain is good. But it doesn't fix the aquifer problem.
"Even with the abundant rain we get in Arkansas," Mr. Swaim emails, "we are seeing a steady decline in the storage in the alluvial and Sparta aquifers. . . . Water levels show occasional fluctuations, but the long-term trend is down."
Oh.
Surface water is plentiful enough, and can help solve the groundwater problems. But Edward Swaim says that would be expensive.
"In the short term, it is cheaper to get groundwater for agriculture, so we continue to over-pump."
But there are those places doing things right. Take, for great example, El Dorado, Arkansas.
Back in the 1990s, folks in and around El Dorado found that their groundwater pools were drying up--and fast. So they set up a county water board and, using local taxes and local ideas, built a water system that diverted water from the Ouachita River to industry, saving the aquifer for drinking water. Edward Swaim tells us the folks in Union County have reduced their groundwater pumping by 70 percent since then--and are seeing what he calls "dramatic rebounds" in water levels.
That could be imitated, maybe even duplicated, elsewhere in the state.
Of course, none of this is sexy.
Because it's water.
But it's one of the more important things Arkies should go about fixing.
Because it's water.
What's important, what's become urgent, is that the state get started imitating El Dorado's success ASAP. All this rain lately has been good for the soil. But many feet below that, things are still looking parched.
Editorial on 05/02/2015